US Official: "...Nothing gets thought through. For example, we are barely engaged in Iraqi politics right now ..."

Via friday-Lunch-Club

So, some are complaining (like Karam, below) that "While the Bush administration made a crucial mistake by completely shutting out Damascus and ignoring the peace process for most of its first term, Barack Obama's administration is making a different mistake by scaling down the level of engagement and diplomatic efforts on this issue..."

"b", previousely from MonnOfAlabama flagged this for us from SWOOP/ here

"A major difficulty in writing a foreign policy commentary at the present time is that there is so little of it. This is not to say that there is no activity. There is indeed plenty of that: the UN nuclear non-proliferation review conference, renewed Middle East peace talks, high-level consultations with NATO and so on. The problem lies elsewhere. Our contacts at the State Department report that, while Secretary of State Clinton is an engaged and energetic participant in the Department’s business, she has no abiding interest in longer-range foreign policy strategy. As such, diplomatic initiatives unfold without any sense of overall purpose or longer-term attention. One official told us: “Our problem is that there is little prioritization. Everything is being driven by what comes up at the moment. Nothing gets thought through. For example, we are barely engaged in Iraqi politics right now, at a vital time for the future of that country.” Officials suspect that Clinton is looking for an alternative position, in this case as head of the International Monetary Fund. In part because of this restrained approach (which she shares with President Obama), policy toward Iran is experiencing an important change. As we have indicated before, Obama’s top advisory team includes those who concede that it is unlikely that the US will be able to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons technology and that the best response is to adopt acontainment policy, modeled on the Cold War-era containment of the Soviet Union. This policy is now openly discussed at senior level in the State Department and NSC, especially as progress in obtaining Russian and Chinese support for effective sanctions has been painfully slow. It goes without say that this policy faces significant opposition, most directly from Israel’s many friends in the US foreign policy community."

Posted by G, Z, or B at 11:44 AM

River to Sea Uprooted Palestinian